Like many people, you will receive presents of books this Christmas. I would suggest you drop a hint for the Steve Jobs Book by Walter Isaacson.
I received a present of this book a couple of Christmases ago. My first thought was, look at the thickness of the book and do I want to spend my Christmas reading this? In early February I picked the book up again and started to read it.
I like to read books with a highlighter in hand; this allows me to review the book quickly and remember important messages and ideas that may be valuable in the future.
On reviewing the book, I realised that a lot of my highlighted ideas were to do with how Steve Jobs and Apple like to pitch and present their ideas/products.
Here are a few pointers which you may find helpful:
APPLE’S DESIGN MANTRA
Simplicity is the Ultimate Sophistication
This also applies to the presentation of ideas. I spend a lot of my time encouraging presenters to reduce and simplify the content of their presentations.
STEVE JOBS ON POWERPOINT
I want them to engage, to hash things out at the table, rather than show a bunch of slides. “People who know what they’re talking about don’t need Power Point”.
I recently helped a Chief Executive reduce the number of slides for an important pitch from 30 slides to less than 10 – and he won the business!
Mike Markkula, an early mentor, taught Jobs to understand that people do judge a book by its cover- and therefore to make sure that all the trappings and packaging of Apple signaled that there was a beautiful gem inside.
How is your pitch/presentation package, is it as innovative as your product, or more likely a series of bullet points on a slide?
Alex Haley once said that the best way to begin a speech is “Let me tell you a story”. Nobody is eager for a lecture, but everybody loves a story. That was the approach that Jobs chose. “Today I want to tell you three stories from my life”, he began. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.
There is nobody better in the world at telling stories than the Irish; it’s in our DNA.
I give people confidence to tell stories in a business situation; give me a call if you need to win more business.
